


in which everything lost is found

by insanetwin



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: F/F, Love, and lots of sex, softttt lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 22:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19365337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insanetwin/pseuds/insanetwin
Summary: Anne Lister used to read in the mornings. She would read all sorts of things: scientific journals, newspaper clippings, memoirs, geographical charts on the world’s ever-expanding globe, anything she could get her hands on.Now, Anne never gets much further than opening a book.It’s not her wife’s fault, Anne often concedes. In fact, most of the time she hardly seems aware that she is doing it.But she has a way. A sweet distracted way, perhaps, but a way that, intentional or not, has managed to dismantle every aspect of Anne Lister’s morning. It usually begins with a question, often starting with a sweet lilting “Anne?” and  follows with the infinite possibilities of her wife’s mild unrest.--or a soft story about anne and ann settling in to their lives together (with sex)





	in which everything lost is found

**Author's Note:**

> maybe i'm soft for a bunch of lesbians!! and what about it??
> 
> i really love this show and if you haven't watched it yet, I would recommend watching it first ! 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it

**in which everything lost is found**

 

Anne Lister used to read in the mornings. She would read all sorts of things: scientific journals, newspaper clippings, memoirs, geographical charts on the world’s ever-expanding globe, anything she could get her hands on. It used to thrill her. She still remembers the moments of pure exhilaration she would feel when in pursuit of a new challenging subject. She could spend hours in a grip of bewilderment, working steadily for that golden moment, that rush of clarity at the end of all her efforts when the world would at last divulge its slyest secrets to her.

Now, Anne never gets much further than opening a book.

It’s not her wife’s fault, Anne often concedes. In fact, most of the time she hardly seems aware that she is doing it.  

But she has a way. A sweet distracted way, perhaps, but a way that, intentional or not, has managed to dismantle every aspect of Anne Lister’s morning.

It usually begins with a question, often starting with a sweet lilting “Anne?” and  follows with the infinite possibilities of her wife’s mild unrest.

“Anne? Did you see the parcel with all of my drawings?”

“Anne? Can you help me find my outdoor shoes? I feel like a walk this morning.”

“Anne? Have you seen my watercolors? There’s a darling little thrush outside that I’d love to paint.”

“Anne? Have you seen my parchment? I’d like to write to my sister.”

And as always, on her side, it ends with a closed book.

She can hardly blame her wife for a little bit of forgetfulness. And in fact, it was a delight to guide her wife around their home at first, truly a necessity in the first few days as Shibden (as it stands now) can often feel like a dark run-down labyrinth. While grand, each room opens into the next with very little light or elegance.

But it has been nearly two weeks and Ann doesn’t appear to be any more settled. Every morning there is something else lost or forsaken. And every morning her wife, normally so quiet and tranquil, is constantly in a search, at a loss. It makes their life together feel impermanent, as if everything could shake apart, tremble, and disappear at the slightest inconvenience -- a pair of missing gloves or a lost parcel could do it. The very thought is pulverizing.

Ann must feel settled. That is the most important thing. Then their life together will be settled, safe.

 “Anne?”

Anne blinks, and straightens up. She turns, and there is her beautiful, smiling wife. Her heart tremors at the sight of her.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Have you seen my sketch pad? I thought I’d draw this morning.”

“Yes,” Anne sighs and closes her book. “Of course.”

***

Possibly the strangest thing about Ann’s vanished belongings is that they truly _do_ disappear. Nothing of Ann’s seems to stay in the same place for long, which is almost impossible to imagine.

Ann is such a careful, deliberate person. It is very rare that she ever loses track of anything within her orbit -- she is always closely attuned to all the details in her small world and knows everything that goes on within it. She knows where Anne has been (regardless if Anne has told her or not), where a letter or a pen may be, whether a belonging of hers is in a box or a drawer or wrapped in scarves at a friend’s house. She always knows where everything is, except for apparently, when she is at Shibden. Her new home.

Anne stares darkly down at their empty bedside drawer. Finally, with a sigh, she straightens up.

“I was almost _sure_ your sketch pad was here.”

“I thought so too,” Ann nuzzles her nose against Anne’s neck. She hugs her gently from behind. “It’s the strangest thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Anne grimaces.

It is actually very strange. Like a machine, Anne’s mind works quickly, effectively, coming to new horrible possibilities every second.

 “It’ll show up again,” Ann kisses her wife’s cheek. With hopeful hands, she smooths up and down her wife’s rigid back. “There are of course _other_ things we can do other than draw.”

But Anne doesn’t notice her wife’s mood. Surely – _surely_ a servant wouldn’t do this? But only a servant of hers _would_ have access to their room. And any small-minded person, regardless of rank, might become righteous and cruel if they accurately assumed the implications of Anne’s companionship with Ms. Walker. And a cruel heart could do anything. Even a servant could likely disrupt Anne’s life, disorient her wife, make her feel lost in her own home.

“But it _should_ be here.” Anne murmurs, feeling none of the soft eager kisses her wife presses along her jaw, her neck, her ear. Her thoughts sink instead into murky darkness. “I just cannot fathom why it would be anywhere else.”

“Mhm,” Ann nibbles on her wife’s jaw, and gently pulls at the thin collar that keeps her away from the soft curve of her shoulder. There, her kissing goes deeper and longer, hungry for connection. Her mouth opens with her next kiss, just barely concealing her teeth as she runs along the ridge of her wife’s collarbone.

But Anne, a whole world apart, merely sighs.

“You know,” she pats her wife’s hand. “I fear that this might be a servant’s doing.”

Ann, hearing this, groans and finally stops. She sighs deeply and rests her flushed cheek against her wife’s cool neck.

“Honestly, dear,” Ann sighs. “I really doubt it.”

“Well, how else can this happen so consistently?”

“I suppose your wife can be very forgetful.”

“Not to my knowledge, my dear. It’s only since you’ve been here that you’ve lost anything.”

“Well, a lot has changed since being here.”

Anne quickly looks back at her wife. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Ann closes her eyes. “Nothing,” she sighs, and tilts her head away. “But I doubt very much a servant did this.”

“I suppose.” Anne says but the sound of her wife’s dissatisfaction has struck through her like a dart. She stands there, heavy as a stone.

A silence settles, a nameless unspecified tension. Anne fiddles with her watch. Outside, the sound of a carriage rumbles along the dirt road. Ann sits heavily on their bed and sighs.

“My love,” Anne starts, with difficulty.  

But she is unable to finish. Joseph bundles in with his mouth still full of bread.

“Ma’am,” he swallows roughly, and coughs. “Mr. Washington is in the drawing room for you.”

“Ah,” Anne grimaces and swiftly looks at her watch. Already her morning has been swept away, she hardly knows where the time goes. With a sigh, she nods, and glances at her wife again.

The time for asking questions has gone. Those beautiful blue eyes of hers (the clearest window to her thoughts) have closed. She can seem so far away with her eyes closed; it can feel at times as if Anne were merely watching her from afar, from another room.

“I’ll be back by supper,” Anne says softly.

Though she leans down for a kiss, her wife offers her only a cheek. The skin is cool and soft to touch, but still the sad absence of her soft sweet kiss prickles on her lips all the way down to where Mr. Washington waits.

***

“Is everything alright, ma’am?”

Anne registers the sound with a grimace and straightens. John’s sweet, absent face stares back at her without expectation. She wipes her sweaty forehead with the back of her palm and sighs.

“Of course, John.”

He nods and rests his elbow on the handle of his shovel. Their work is slowly becoming visible. Soon the plains of grass and wild hellebore will be stately gardens to walk through. Their road will be defined not by weeds but by yellow orchids, blue hydrangeas, marigolds, lilacs (her wife’s favorite) and maple trees.

It will of course never replace the gardens her wife is accustomed to. But it will be a place of beauty, a place for blooming, unending life and a direct reflection of her commitment to Ann, to love and to hold, to cherish forever.

“Ma’am, are you sure you’re okay?”

Anne quickly wipes the wetness from her cheeks. “Of course,” she snaps, and delves her shovel deep into the black earth. “I’m always alright.”

But her mind is full of her wife’s voice, like water, it turns against itself, churning ‘ _a lot has changed since being here’_ in circles.

Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps the new environment really has shaken Ann up. And of course, Anne is so busy, she is hardly around to make the transition any easier for her.

She’d of course prefer to be with her wife, but there is simply _so much_ to do. How can she help it if her day is scheduled the moment she wakes up? From fixing up the coal pits to the garden estate, she’s left with very little time and again with very little variation beyond the slim chance of an hour or two to read in the morning. Which again, is rare due to her wife’s apparently newfound forgetfulness.

But… if her wife is truly feeling out of place, she can do better.

She will do better.

She has to.

***

It is a little past supper when Anne finally gets back to Shibden. The night sky is black and scarred with thousands of cold white stars. She walks heavily along the road, her spine as straight and heavy as iron. Time had passed like a scarf in wind, it slipped high in the sky and disappeared behind the mountains before she could make it home in time to keep her promise to Ann.  

When she enters, Cordingley has a smile for her.

“Hello, ma’am.” She hands her a small plate of what remains of diner. “Your aunt has already taken to bed. Your sister and father are in the drawing room, reading.” 

“And my...” Anne pauses, quickly clears her throat. “Ms. Walker -- where is she?”

“Oh, she’s in your room.”

“Excellent.”

Her first feeling, as she mounts the stairs, is one of relief and excitement. It’s often the only feeling she gets when about to see her wife. Yet there is a layer of something else plastered to her heart, something heavy and inescapable. She can’t erase the cool look of her wife’s disappointment from her memory, it weighs like a heavy stone on her heart.

By the time she opens the door, her heart is thudding loud in her ears.

Hesitantly, she stops at the doorway.

Her wife is not asleep as Anne thought she might be. Instead, she is leaning against the headboard with her pencil delicately placed between her fingers, her drawing pad flat on her lap.

When Anne clears her throat, Ann looks up.

 For one terrible moment, Ann’s face appears as cool and flat as a frozen pond. But then, slowly, warmth blooms in those blue eyes and softens her like spring.

Ann sets aside her drawing pad and opens her arms to her wife. Nothing could have kept Anne away. Her body moves to her wife like a trembling wave of water towards the shore.

“Darling,” she kisses Ann’s cheek, the corner of her eye, her soft lips. “I’m so sorry I missed dinner.”

“It’s alright.” Ann murmurs, and inclines for one more kiss.

“You found your drawing pad.”

“Yes.” Ann says with a tight smile.

“Where was it?”

She figured she’d be treated to one of Ann’s frivolous stories that often wind aimlessly from one detail to the next but instead her wife merely shrugs and gestures vaguely across the room.  

“It wasn’t far.” She says simply and returns to her drawing.

“Ah,” Anne nods, and undoes her coat buttons, unsure of her wife’s mood. “Well.”

As she slides off her black waist coat and skirt, she watches her wife carefully from the corner of her eye. Ann appears almost as calm and tranquil as she usually does in the evenings, but Ann can sense something else, an unspecified tension that is directed entirely on her wife’s drawing, her fingers using more sharp delicate lines with each detail of her most recent drawing, an elegant-looking bird.

Anne tilts her head closer, appraising the drawing quietly. “That’s very good,” she praises, and buttons up her sleeping clothes.

But she receives only a quiet hum from her wife.

In looser clothing, Anne slides quietly into bed. She moves hesitantly closer but stops before their shoulders touch. It is as if an invisible wall has fallen down between them.

After a beat of hesitation, Anne gently lays her cheek against her wife’s warm shoulder. Her wife always smells vaguely of citrus, orange or lemon or something else sweet and stinging.

There, with her cheek solid against skin, she listens to the secrets of the body, the quiet act of breathing, the soft drum of her heart. Though she has studied a hundred different hearts and lungs, there is still nothing quite so singular or precious to her as the beating of her wife’s heart.

“How can I make it up to you?” Anne whispers quietly against her wife’s skin.

There’s a beat of hesitation. Then, quietly, Ann leans to touch her cheek against Anne’s temple.

“What do you mean, dear?” she asks.

“I broke a promise,” Anne kisses the back of her wife’s neck, and gently slides her hand up her back, touching with each fingertip the knobby buttons of her wife’s spine. “I’d like to make it up to you.”

“Oh,” her wife sighs, and reaches back for Anne’s hand. “Your company is more than enough.”

“So there is nothing I can do for you?”

A beat of silence passes.

Ann’s soft mouth pulls to the side in hesitation.

 “What?” Anne asks, intrigued. “What would you like?”

“Well,” Ann soft pale cheeks flush pink. “I suppose if you wanted to…”

“Yes?”

“It has been a while...”

Anne waits for her wife to complete her thought, but it never comes. She merely clears her throat and turns a darker shade of red, looking off to the other side of the room. Anne’s first thought (hope does spring eternal) is that her wife is in the mood for some lovemaking. But then after a closer appraisal, it seems unlikely. These last two weeks, her wife has seemed more pained than usual, almost fragile. Anne suspects that she must be suffering greatly from her spine.

Resolved, Anne leans back on her knees.

“Very well,” she smiles, and plucks at her wife’s sleeping shirt. “You’ll need this off.”

Ann’s eyes widen. Then she’s up like a newborn colt, clumsy with eagerness, she lifts up onto her knees and quickly yanks her white sleeping shirt up over her head. Anne laughs, and helps the material up over her head. But she can’t help but look longingly over her wife’s body, the narrow curve of her shoulders, her perky breasts, the soft stomach she so very much loves to kiss her way down...

It really has been a long time…

But tonight isn’t about her.

“Lie on your stomach.” She commands

Ann hurriedly slides onto her stomach. Her ankles knock against Anne’s bent arms in her haste, and a nervous bout of nervous giggles takes over her wife. Gingerly, Anne puts soft kisses down the apex between her wife’s shoulder blades.  

A soft breath expels against their sheets. Ann stretches out her arms and lays down her cheek.

“What are you going to do?” her wife asks, smiling.

Anne grins, and gently straddles her wife’s backside. She gently caresses down the curve of her back, following along the bumps of her spine.

“Prepare yourself my dear,” she says and reaches for the minty liniment her wife uses to ease pain. “I’m going to give you the _best_ back rub of your life.”

“Oh.”

Everything stops and hangs off that word.

Anne pauses her puzzled hands on her wife’s back. “Doesn’t that sound good?”

“Yes,” Ann sighs. “Of course. That sounds lovely.”

Her wife sinks into the bed. A few minutes later and Ann’s eyes are closed, the skin of her back as soft as honey. Still, Anne drags her hands up and down her wife’s back, fascinated by the stitch of hair along her neck, the skin that is now almost as familiar as her own. She knows the freckles and the knobs of her spine, the indents near the base of her back.

Slowly, she lowers down to her wife’s ear. There’s that orange smell, a sensation she can nearly taste.

“Goodnight, my love.”

“Mhm.” Ann murmurs. “Night.”

***

In the morning, Anne has no time to waste. By the time she wakes up, the sun is already lining in orange the ridge of distant mountains. Her wife is sleeping soundly in the bed next to her, still deep in her restful sleep.

She predicts she has only about an hour before her wife wakes and her day truly begins.

Quickly, Anne slides out of bed (careful not to wake her wife) and dresses, perfunctory tightening and buttoning each layer.

She walks quickly, quietly, like a thief to her own study, careful to avoid any creaks on the floorboard. As she picks up a book from her shelf, an enormous triumph fills her. She sets her teacup onto its little white saucer beside her chair sinks back comfortably.

Yet she gets no further than  a few pages before a creak at the door punctures the silence.

Anne closes her eyes.

“Anne?” her wife calls sweetly.

With a sigh, Anne turns back to her wife. She is in a simple light summer dress the color of the soft morning light. The color of her hair.

“Yes, my dear?”

Her wife smiles. “Would you mind joining me to the little chaumiere of yours? I think I’ve lost a hat. Or maybe gloves. I know I left something over there.”

“Something?” Anne hums skeptically. “That seems awfully vague, my dear. Are you sure you are in such a need of it now?”

“Yes.” Her wife says curtly.

Anne sighs. Seeing very little way out of it other than outright denying her wife (something she loathes to do) she smiles and closes her book.

“Very well.”

***

The morning is clear and bright, smelling strongly of warm dirt and rich flowers. A field of purple flowers blows back and forth with the wind. Ann walks easily at her side, a hand affectionately resting on Anne’s elbow.

Finally, the chaumiere appears between the trees. It is still a squat little cottage, not at all the elegant summer house she’d intended, but Ann seems to adore it all the more for its rustic wood, its homeliness.

“There we are,” Anne says as she opens the door.

The space is a smug warm area that smells of wood, cold ashes, and of the old marigold flowers dying in a little jar by the window. Briefly skimming the area, Anne loses hope that this might be a simple search. The cabin is swept and tidy, its varnished pine floor clean of any belonging.

To her surprise, Ann doesn’t seem interested in pursuing any sort of search. When she enters, she promptly sits down on the little plush couch by the fireplace.

“Will you put on a fire, dear?” Ann asks and pulls the fabric of her hat from her chin.

Anne’s eyebrows rise. “Will we be here long enough for that?”

“It’s possible.” Ann smiles in a way that melts her heart.

Well, a fire takes no more than a minute to make. And it brightens the small space with sound and light, fills the room with the pleasant smell of woodsmoke. But by the time Anne is finished, her wife has only puzzled her again.

She has undone her hair. Her blonde curls now fall around her shoulders, and she gently loosens the curls with her fingers before patting the empty space beside her.

“Come sit down with me.” Ann entreats.

Anne hesitates. “Aren’t we here to find your hat, dear? Or gloves. Whichever.”

 “I’m sure they will pop up somewhere. But in the meantime,” Ann’s smile becomes almost uncharacteristically mischievous, “We have some time to kill don’t we?”

Tension builds in the back of Anne’s neck. Inside, a tiny watch is clicking away.

“I actually don’t,” she says. “I’ve got quite a bit to do today. I’ve got the coals to take care of, and the garden. You know this.”

Something mysterious happens to her wife’s face. All emotion pulls back beneath a cool layer of unfeeling, an expression so blank and unfamiliar it might have been the face of a stranger.

“You can’t spend even one morning with your wife?”

Ann’s normally soft voice is cold, precise. Anne tries to laugh but the sound shrinks in the perilous space between them.

“Dear,” she says. “My mornings are busy, you know that.”

 “And, apparently, your evenings.”

Anne sighs. “This is about last night.”

“No,” Ann says curtly, her voice surprisingly sharp. “It’s not about last night, or even this morning. It’s about every single day since I married you.”

A horrible hollowness opens up inside of Anne. For nearly a minute, she cannot breathe; it trembles and widens inside of her, this deep and scraped empty feeling, like a coal pit, it is deep, wordless, sightless and only grieves.

Finally, she sucks in a breath.

“What’s going on?” she asks and puts her hands on her hips. Though she tries to sound firm and stable, she is not quite able to hide the trembling inside of her. “Tell me what’s happened.”

Ann sighs and simply shakes her head. She absentmindedly touches the ring on her finger, and in the dense warm air, Anne can feel the sad strange flicker of fragility around them, the secret life they’d started together like a thread that wove into the future, a perfect unnamed thread capable of going on forever or getting cut. If Ann changed her mind, if she decided to leave, nobody but them would know the life that they put away. Her whole world could swing out of orbit and she’d only have the loss of a companion to give name to it to strangers.

Silently, Anne kneels in front of her wife. She pushes her hands up to the comforting bend of her wife’s knees, beneath her dress, and grips her with all her might.  

“Ann,” Her voice comes out bare, stripped, and this time, she doesn’t bother to hide her trembling. She rubs her wife’s legs to comfort herself. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Ann sighs, and closes her eyes.

At the closing of her eyes, the tenuous view of Ann’s thoughts, the panic of losing her blooms so strongly in her that Anne reaches up with both hands to grip her wife’s face.

She waits until those eyes open again, and she can look into the soft endless eyes of her wife.

“Ann,” she pleads and rubs her cheeks gently with her thumbs. “What is it?” Her wife blinks away the tears reddening around the edges of her eyes.

Then her wife sighs and baffles her again.

“You don’t want me anymore.”

Anne blinks, and cannot think of anything else to do but stare.

It takes nearly a minute before her wife’s tearful devastated eyes makes her sputter with a laugh.

“What?!”

Ann groans and tries to remove her wife’s hold on her, but Anne holds tighter, “No, no, don’t move,” she hushes, puts soft kisses along her wife’s wet cheeks. “Forget I laughed, I must have just lost my mind. What’s really going on?”

“It’s just that,” Ann cries, and tugs Anne’s hands from her face. “You don’t want me anymore. I can _feel it_.”

“Darling.” Anne says, aghast.

“You don’t touch me anymore! We haven’t – we haven’t made love in nearly two weeks!”

“Surely, that’s not true—”

“I mean, I am not counting the mornings when you just – well, rub me, until I –” she sighs in frustration, unable to put anything in words. “ _You know_ , which is _nice_ , it’s good – but it’s _quick_ , and rushed, and we barely even kissed!” her teary eyes close, and she sighs. “We don’t _kiss_ anymore.”

“Ann,” Anne gapes, then falls back on her heels, momentarily speechless. “Well, it’s not from lack of want, dear – I just thought…?”

Ann blinks her teary eyes at her. “Thought what?”

“Well,” Anne hesitates. Now than ever, she knows she must be delicate with her words. “You just have seemed sort of …fragile these last two weeks.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Ann huffs and irritably whips away a curl of her hair. “I won’t _snap_ in half if you touch me.”

“No,” Anne concedes and tries again to put her hand on her wife’s cheek, but a hand slap her away. “Ouch – well, you’ve seemed very disoriented the last few weeks, dear. I thought for sure…”

“Good lord,” her wife huffs. “If you made love to me every once in a while, maybe I wouldn’t have a reason to forget where everything was!”

Anne blinks, astounded. Suddenly, the last two weeks resurfaces to her memory, the mornings of forgetfulness now like a blooming pool of aquatic life, full of fascinating details and a hundred little hungry motivations.

As this information slowly absorbs, a bubbling laugh lifts up out of her. It bursts out in little peeps and snorts, insuppressible.

“You’re laughing at me.” Ann sighs miserably.

“Oh, yes,” Anne laughs, and lifts back onto her knees, a soft hand on her darling wife’s cheek. She sighs. “Darling, you are an impossibly sweet and ridiculous woman.”

“I’m so glad my nerves provide you such entertainment.”

“Oh they do,” Anne purrs and warmly kisses her wife’s cheek, kissing softly from her ear, to her neck, to the wet corner of her eyes, to the soft curve of her jaw.

Ann shivers, and lifts her chin so that Anne can kiss down the slow slope of her wife’s neck. She loosens as she goes the tight corset that blocks her access to the spattering of freckles that marks her way down to her wife’s breasts.

“Anne,” Ann gasps when Ann sucks the soft skin of her neck into her mouth. Her fingers stroke the back of Anne’s head, and taking the hint, Anne takes a break momentarily from her wife’s corset to undo the complicated braid on the back of her head so that Ann can run her fingers through it.

 Ann has never breathed a word about what she enjoys during sex, likely still to shy to mention it at all but Anne has been able to distinguish between her sounds what her wife enjoys the most. The sounds she makes are like a ladder, little notes that play a significant role in helping her climb to the golden moment, the ragged immensity of what they do together. And pulling on her hair as Anne makes her way down most certainly is among them.

Ann firmly grips a handful of Anne’s hair. With a pleasantly painful yank, she pulls Anne up from her chest to her waiting mouth.

Their lips connect, warm and soft and open mouthed. Ann groans and wraps both her arms firmly around Anne’s back, hugging her close as they kiss.

They go on like that for a while, kissing hungry and open-mouthed, aiming for the mouth and mostly succeeding.

“Anne,” Ann breathes in a soft, urgent whisper, and Anne smiles, climbing over her wife on hands and knees.

“We won’t be able to do much more than rub with that impossible dress of yours, you know.” Anne whispers into her ear, gently nips it.

“Take it off then.” Ann breathes earnestly.

“I think you’ve forgotten just how complicated that thing is.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I must have forgotten just how often you wear dresses,” Ann nips her teasingly, and smiles. She rubs her hands down her wife’s arms. “It’s simpler than you think, actually. Let me stand up, and I’ll be back before you can blink.”

Anne leans back, surprised by her wife’s sudden confidence.

 “You’re taking that off too, aren’t you?” she asks, as her first layer falls down to the ground. The fabric crumbles in a soft heap like a cloud and she steps out of it carefully, just her corset remaining.

Staring, Anne clears her throat and gradually nods, remembering the question. She works quickly and efficiently on her own clothes, and though she has taken a great amount of time perfecting the time it takes her to get in and out of such clothes, she still finds herself nearly lagging behind her wife.

By a mere few seconds, she is bare before her wife, an impressive feat that her wife doesn’t seem to acknowledge at all.

She seems more inclined to get them back to what they were doing, and does it very effectively, by pushing her naked wife down on the couch by her shoulders and straddling her.

Anne gulps, dry mouthed as her wife’s naked thighs tuck themselves close against her own. Ann wraps her arms around Anne’s shoulders, and lays her cheek against Anne’s forehead.

 Golden light hair falls into Anne’s face, and she gently holds Ann closer. The smell of citrus and woodsmoke surrounds them, and as the fire crackles, it seemed possible that they could be the only two people in the entire world. No one would come looking for them, they could be safe from work and the stress of rude looks and jeers.

Which is impossible. Eventually, her servants will look for her. Marian will likely need some form of distraction, her coal pits a new direction, and the roads a new layer of rich soil.

But for now, as Anne gently holds her wife’s face in her hands, they were safe.  

For a while, they simply kiss.

It’s still one of her favorite things to do with her wife. Ann, though inexperienced, makes up for lack of skill with boundless enthusiasm and tenderness. Her kisses will wander off and get sloppy but there is always such cherished devotion in her kisses that regardless of where her lips go, they inspire in her a rush of heat.   

“Anne,” her wife sighs again, and arches into her wife’s mouth as she wanders down her chest.

Anne holds Ann close as her mouth wanders down her breasts, gently spreading her wife’s legs to make enough space for her hand to slip up between them.

Ann moans loudly, and Anne gently shushes her with her mouth.  

“Shh,” she kisses her again, smiling. “You’ll get us in trouble again.”

“That was not my fault.” Ann whimpers into her wife’s shoulder and makes no visible effort to muffle herself.

Between their bodies, Anne slowly strokes, searching for the small bundle of nerves. Once she finds it, she avoids it, moving instead a finger up and down in long firm strokes.

“Don’t tease me,” Ann sighs, very visibly (and loudly) loving the petting. Anne draws it out even longer, allowing only sparingly, in odd incidents for her fingers to return to the bundle of nerves, and in each occurrence, Ann moves as if struck with electricity.

Finally, when a fine sheen of sweat lights both their bodies and her wife’s cries start to sound more ragged and desperate, Anne moves in close small circles until the trembling builds to its frightening climax – like a small death, a momentary paralysis that takes the entire body as if the muscles cannot think of anything else to do but close up and shut down.  

At last Ann collapses into her arms. Her body feels warm as honey as their slick skin closes each little gap.

“Oh,” Ann breathes when it is possible again. She lays her head tenderly against Anne’s shoulder, breathing quietly, unevenly. “Oh Anne. I’ve missed this so much.”

“Mm,” Anne strokes her wife’s back, warm and content. “I have too.”

Time passes slowly, trickling like water.

Then softly, she feels her wife turn. Soft lips press against her ear, kiss and then stop again. Hesitating.

It takes a moment.

And then, tentatively, Ann whispers: “Will you let me try something?”

Anne lifts her head curiously, but Ann will not look at her. She remains close to her ear, hidden away, waiting.

After a while, Anne clears her throat and rubs her assuringly.

“Of course.” She says.  

Tentatively, Ann stands up from her lap. She stands in front of her, naked skin aglow in the dim light. With a quiet clearing of her throat, her wife tries her best for a commanding voice.

“Lie back against the couch.”

It likely comes out more quietly than she was hoping, but it still rings like a bell all throughout Anne’s body.

Slowly, Anne lays down.

The way her wife’s face changes in the darkening light puts a fierce heat in her belly. It’s an expression she has never seen before, an expression of brave, reckless desire.

Gently, Ann steps over her wife’s arms and legs so that she can straddle her hips. She looks down at Anne’s body like it’s something she’d like to lay herself down on forever.  Comprehension clicks and Anne’s heart stutters in her chest.

“Oh.” Anne says.

Ann bends down to rest her forehead against Anne’s.

“You may- you may have to tell me,” her breath shakes. “What you like, or don’t like.”

And then before Anne can say anything, her wife is crawling down her body, positioning her legs carefully at the end of the couch and tucking her hands gently beside Anne’s hips. Her face is a hot flush of excitement.

Seeing her wife crouched between her legs, a nervous excitement electrifies her body. She has always been the pursuer, in all of her relationships, she has been the one to perform. And though her lovers were often very reciprocal, none of them quested to making it entirely down with their mouth.

Gulping, Anne feels a hot flush fill her cheeks. She watches as Ann bends down slowly to kiss the side of her ribs.

Slowly, her kisses gently trail down. With the confidence of an intelligent student, Ann slides her wife’s thigh gently over her shoulder and presses a long firm kiss against the inside of her thighs, first the right and then the left.

“I love you,” Ann breathes softly, her mouth resting almost entirely against the inside of her thigh.

 Those words press against the inside of her heart, and though she has not been able to say them aloud for years and years, inside her heart they squirm like tadpoles in an inch of water.  

Stumbling upon the limit of her ability, she nearly cries out in frustration. Why does the brain falter dumbly to name what it has tenderly nurtured?

If she could, she would lead her wife out to the field outside and point to the black dirt where all her efforts have nurtured, slowly, gradually, the tiny roots that will flourish her wife’s garden. If she could do that, she could at last communicate what her tongue cannot.

She gasps, out of breath and reaches for Ann’s hand. She lays her wife’s palm flat against her stomach, and holds it fiercely as the woman ventures downward, trailing kisses as she goes. Tonight, she cannot say those words. But as she holds her wife’s thin fingers, she feels the depth of her love like the ever-expanding universe, like the brain, like the infinite potentiality people have towards thought and creation. She feels it like an endless wave, always rising, building forever.

 Her wife slips her tongue inside of her and Anne gasps. She shudders, her hips lifting as she grips her wife’s hands. She holds onto her tightly all the way through the gasping and rocking, her wife licking slowly, finding her again and again until the feeling is so immense inside of her Anne can do nothing else but cry.

Gripping onto her wife’s golden hair, her body arches, and she squeezes her wife’s head between her thighs, reeling towards the impossible edge of the universe.

“Oh, god,” Anne cries, and can muster nothing else but that for a long time.

Often, she had considered herself the strong one in their relationship – there must be someone who ventures ahead, who makes the difficult daring choices, who stands in front, braced for impact.

But tonight it is Ann who lays herself down into Anne’s arms, gathering her close to her body, kissing her soothingly, lovingly, putting her back together.  

***

Anne wakes slowly. She feels warm and cozy against her wife, her cheek resting against a silky pillow of golden hair.

Slowly, her wife turns. She blinks her sleepy beautiful eyes at her.

“Good morning,” She smiles and shifts her hips closer, their legs and hips now touching. Tenderly, she strokes down Anne’s cheek with a finger. “Will you be off to read this morning?”

“In a moment,” Anne whispers, and gently takes a hold of her wife’s hand to press soft, loving kisses along her fingers, her knuckles, the tiny complicated bones of her wrist.

Time passes. It’s impossible to know how long. But slowly the bed pools with the warmth of the morning sunlight. Leaf shadows flicker across their bed spread. Later Ann asks again whether she’d like to read, trailing a curious finger down Anne’s ear, her neck.

“In a moment.” Anne says softly, lovingly, and brings her hand up to her mouth for another kiss.


End file.
